Ovechkin, Carlson rise to challenge
Caps not getting deserved buzz
MONTREAL — Even if John Carlson wanted to ignore his stat line and how it ranks in the league, his Capitals teammates wouldn’t let him. Nicklas Backstrom and Alex Chiasson regularly remind him that his name is still atop the points leader board for defensemen, and Carlson still isn’t quite sure what to make of it all.
“Obviously, I know,” Carlson said. “It’s not like I won’t look because I’m superstitious or anything like that. The guys are constantly joking about it, too. So, I know everything, but I don’t actively look at it to prove a point or search for some goal.”
Meanwhile, Alex Ovechkin has no shame in admitting he monitors where he stands in the goal-scoring race. “I don’t believe when someone says, ‘I don’t care about the stats,’ and all of this kind of stuff. Of course they want points, they wants goals,” he said earlier this month.
And just as Carlson’s name is at the top of the list for points among defensemen, Ovechkin leads the league in goals with 44. Their impressive individual seasons have the Capitals again poised to win the Metropolitan Division, even after salary cap constraints weakened the roster in the summer.
But while both players are at the top of their respective fields for a division-leading, playoff-bound team, both are afterthoughts in NHLawards conversations. When the Professional Hockey Writers’ Association conducted a midseason vote before the All-Star Game, Carlson received just one first-place vote for the Norris Trophy, which goes to the league’s best all-around blue-liner, and he finished in sixth place overall. In voting for the Hart Trophy, the NHL’s MVP award, Ovechkin garnered two first-place votes, placing seventh place. Though some of the candidates for both awards have changed as the season has progressed, both Carlson and Ovechkin flaunted impressive numbers relative to their competition both at midseason and now.
Carlson has played a career-high 24:58 a night while scoring 15 goals and 46 assists for 61 points, also career highs. Ovechkin arguably has a more compelling case for the Hart Trophy. At age 32, he’s scored 44 goals and 37 assists this season, on pace to finish with his best point total since the 2009-10 season, when he was 24. Tonight, 7 TV: NBCSWA Radio: 1500 AM